Since 1947 the major foreign policy of the United States government has been containment. This policy of creating situations of strength which would prevent the extension of Communist power and influence in the world was first proclaimed in the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947). The policy had been anticipated in 1946 when the battleship Missouri visited Turkey and some forty Mediterranean ports. In the course of this display the Missouri was joined by two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. The early sensitivity to Soviet threats to the Middle East and its approaches, revealed in the Doctrine and that naval demonstration, was not consistently maintained at this time or later. Perhaps, indeed, American foreign policy only operates with fullest energy, when directly confronted with a serious Soviet threat. At any rate, it may be argued that for the period 1946–1955, when the Soviet Union was neither conspicuously active nor influential in the Middle East, United States policy contributed little to the solution or easing of the area's all but intractable problems. So to describe the problems is to propose a good excuse, but they were the problems, and, unfortunately, they did not wither from neglect or incantations.

Africa, an area of contrasts and contradictions, is beginning to assume new importance in Western eyes. Its more than 200 million people, in many stages of economic and political evolution, are evincing a new vitality and demonstrating a growing consciousness of Africa's place in the modem world. The rapid changes on this vast continent are most fully reflected on the political plane. Since World War II, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, the Sudan, and the Gold Coast (Ghana) have become independent states. Former Italian Somaliland, Nigeria, and Uganda are taking uncertain strides in that direction. France is offering the hope of a new political future to its remaining African possessions. In addition, new and modern cities have been carved out of jungles, diversified skills imparted to Africans, and the values of a scientific age made more comprehensible.

All national security systems have their methods of keeping track of subversive activity. No doubt a certain number of members of subversive organizations are also police agents, and no doubt a number of police agents are also members of subversive organizations. This is as likely to have been as true of Tsarist Russia as of anywhere else. Certainly the penetration of police agents into the revolutionary movement and of revolutionaries into the secret police was carried to such lengths that in a number of well known cases it was impossible to tell whose interests were being served by certain individuals. In this article I describe four such cases—E. F. Asev, organizer of the assassination of the Russian Minister of the Interior in 1904 and of the Grand Duke Sergius in 1905; Father G. A. Gapon, the priest who led the procession of workers on “Bloody Sunday” in 1905; Bogrov, the assassin of the Russian Prime Minister in 1911; and R. V. Malinovsky, who was leader of the Bolsheviks in the Duma from 1912 until 1914.

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), a self-styled “Christian Democrat” who dominated two generations of Dutch political history, has received passing mention rather than scholarly examination outside the Netherlands. Ernst Troeltsch, speaking of Kuyper's theological work, called him a key figure in the development of modern Calvinistic thought. And Michael Fogarty mentions Kuyper's influence in building “one of the most successful, and in many ways the most instructive political, economic and social movements to be found anywhere in the Christian world.” But, apart from such brief notes, there is little. We propose in this article to sketch Kuyper's career and summarize the ideas with which he attacked Liberalism.

Twelve years have passed since Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker at Berlin. Since then a number of aides and associates have published their memoirs, but on the whole the literature on Hitler has been surprisingly meager. Some of those who could have told us more about him did not survive him long enough to do so, while few of the survivors were articulate enough to set down their recollections in writing. Nevertheless among recently published reminiscences dealing with the Fuehrer a few do contain data that are new and significant. Taken together with the Proceedings of the Nürnberg Trials and the records of his informal table talks, they cast some additional light on that sinister and elusive figure.